Selections From Hindu Religious Literature

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This is a book of selections from the vast religious literature of India which enables one in some measure to understand the heart of Indian religious experience.

Slow and patient brooding is essential to grasp the inner meaning of the great passages of any scripture. To grasp the deeply religious impulses which find utterance in these passages they have to be carried to the inner chamber in which one quietly faces life's questions in the presence of God.

Prolonged familiarity with the vital passages is essential to accomplish such a task. This handy book of selections will be of help here.

It contains passages for the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita and other Sanskrit sources which are often the fountainhead of religious life in India, as well as from the rich devotional literature available in Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.

The volume carries a number of exquisite portraits which greatly enhances its value.

Dr. H. S. Parmar (b. 1951) Μ.Α., Ph.D. is currently serving as Associate Professor in Economics, Directorate of Correspondence Courses, Himachal Pradesh University. He specialises in tribal studies and rural development. He has been engaged in teaching and research for about two decades.

THE suggestion has often been made that a book of selections from the religious literature of India should be made available to Christian readers in a handy form. This book is designed to meet the need.

What is the purpose of such a book? In the first place, it will enable us in some measure to understand the heart of the religious experience of non-Christians in India. The deepest regions of man's spiritual experience are not always easy to reach. We cannot understand the essence of Hinduism merely by reading books about it, particularly in a critical spirit. The careful and analytic study of Hindu religious books may make us familiar with the general ideas which they contain. But it requires more than careful study to get at the intimate way in which these ideas influence life, form life. Ideas are of value only as they inspire experience. To separate theory from life, philosophy from experience, would be unwise. If the deeply religious impulses which lie behind the utterances in the sacred books of India are to be grasped by us, those books should be meditated on; they should be taken to the inner chamber in which we quietly face life's questions in the presence of God. It is not merely the mood in which we read these writings, but also the frequency with which we read them, that will help us. The great passages of any Scripture do not yield their inner meaning until they are brooded over slowly and patiently and for a long time. A perusal of them, or even a study of them, will not accomplish what prolonged familiarity with them alone will bring out. This book of selections will help the Christian to ponder on the vital passages.

THAT God created men and gave them their habitations, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us, is the plain teaching of St. Paul, and this thought was carried on and developed by the great Fathers of the Church, who diligently sought for any fragment of truth which pointed the way to the full revelation of God in Jesus Christ. What history shows us that God did in Europe in revealing truths to the great philosophers of Greece, truths which, transmuted by the fuller knowledge of God in His Son Jesus Christ, have become part of the heritage of the Church throughout the world, He has done, we surely believe, in other countries too. Next to Palestine and Greece there is no country whose meditations on things unseen have made a deeper impression on the thought of the world than have those of India. And it is the wisdom and the privilege of the Church of these days to transform .nd preserve the truths that lie hidden in the literature of India. To know them is to know the mind of India. To those who know them the avenues of their hearers' minds lie open, when they try to present to them the full light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To preserve them is to safe- guard the gifts which God has in the past given to this great country, and to lay the foundations of fuller truth deep in the hearts of its peoples.